Aura Cleansed Improvement, Hi I'm New Options

[crunk]

Hi all, just finished my first playthrough of IA5. I've never tried any of the previous versions; this was the first and only mod I tried. I did my research before choosing this one because I wanted to be fairly certain it wasn't a waste of time.

Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed. It was pretty difficult but I got through with many reloads, ranging from full wipes, failed pickpocketing (I pickpocketed every single npc in the game because Sikret basically created a whole new world to explore), failed spell learning, party member dying etc.

I have no suggestions for gameplay or balance issues because I trust Sikret will do a good job. Most importantly I don't want to know what's coming pre-emptively. So whatever Sikret decides to do, I'll play the next one as if it were a new game, new rules, whatever. That's the whole point of these mods, getting a challenging, and brand new game to play...for free. Big ups to the mod's creator.

I do request one thing though. On the harder battles, I pause over 9000 times each fight for tactical purposes. The thing I gently caressing hate is the aura thing. Can you put in a mod that makes the caster say 'Aura Cleansed' when the new round comes up? So we know when hes ready to cast another spell, use another potion, etc? That way we aren't sitting there in real time, for example spamming stoneskin, noticing aura not cleansed, re-attack to wait out aura to avoid doing absolutely nothing... then 1/1000th of a round and 45 pause+unpause later, do the same thing for the 46th time. And the round is STILL not over. Sorry, maybe nobody else is bothered by this. High APM FTL.

[Sikret]

For now and offhand, I can think of a few reasons; there may be more.

1- For spells which can be put in contingencies and triggers, it can't be implemented without unwelcome side effects. The spell will be fired in an instance, but the delayed "display String" effect will show the message at the wrong moment. For example if a spell has a casting time of 4, the delayed effect should be added to the spell with a delay value of 2, but when the spells fires through contingency, the message "Aura Cleansed" will be displayed after 2 seconds.

2- If a mage wears Robe of Vecna or has casting time bonus by any means, the message will be displayed at the wrong time. He has finished casting early, but his aura won't be cleansed at the time the message is displayed.

3- For dragons (and other special creatures whose aura is always cleansed) the message will be shown improperly and irrelevantly.

4- While the Improved Alacrity spell is active, we will have a mixed mess of "Aura Cleansed" messages shown on the screen; those from Improved Alacrity as well as those added to the spell files.

[DavidW]

For now and offhand, I can think of a few reasons; there may be more.

1- For spells which can be put in contingencies and triggers, it can't be implemented without unwelcome side effects. The spell will be fired in an instance, but the delayed "display String" effect will show the message at the wrong moment. For example if a spell has a casting time of 4, the delayed effect should be added to the spell with a delay value of 2, but when the spells fires through contingency, the message "Aura Cleansed" will be displayed after 2 seconds.

2- If a mage wears Robe of Vecna or has casting time bonus by any means, the message will be displayed at the wrong time. He has finished casting early, but his aura won't be cleansed at the time the message is displayed.

Although I could be wrong, I think if you add the DisplayString opcode in a global effect on the spell rather than in each ability block, it'll come in at the point at which the caster starts casting, which I think solves these problems at least.

[Sikret]

For now and offhand, I can think of a few reasons; there may be more.

1- For spells which can be put in contingencies and triggers, it can't be implemented without unwelcome side effects. The spell will be fired in an instance, but the delayed "display String" effect will show the message at the wrong moment. For example if a spell has a casting time of 4, the delayed effect should be added to the spell with a delay value of 2, but when the spells fires through contingency, the message "Aura Cleansed" will be displayed after 2 seconds.

2- If a mage wears Robe of Vecna or has casting time bonus by any means, the message will be displayed at the wrong time. He has finished casting early, but his aura won't be cleansed at the time the message is displayed.

Although I could be wrong, I think if you add the DisplayString opcode in a global effect on the spell rather than in each ability block, it'll come in at the point at which the caster starts casting, which I think solves these problems at least.

You are right. I had forgotten this possibility when I was writing my previous post. Thanks for the reminder. It can completely solve the second issue and can soften the first one to some extent (as it's still inconvenient to see for example 3 "Aura cleansed" messages 6 seconds after firing a spell trigger containing three spells; not to mention seeing several such messages for enemies who prebuff).

And since there are also other reasons against adding those strings to spells, I think that it's not an appealing idea and can be dropped.